The World Quality Report 2019-20 (WQR), released today by Capgemini and Sogeti, part of the Capgemini Group, and published in conjunction with Micro Focus, shows alignment with business priorities and customer expectations as the top challenge on the road to agile and DevOps adoption. It highlights a need for enhanced quality assurance (QA) and test activities that contribute to business growth, and also cites the increasing importance of addressing security concerns faced by IT teams. 59% reported deficiencies in the controls that should ensure data processing and storage systems adhere to security policies. The report details that the future of QA and testing practices will include a smarter, connected testing approach with intelligent analytics, test automation platforms, and enhanced technical skills.
This year’s WQR further highlights insufficient progress in test data and test environment management (TDM and TEM) as challenges continue to escalate for organizations: 60% of respondents this year said the greatest test environment roadblock they face is cost. This figure is up from 39% just two years ago.
Key highlights include:
‘Business growth and outcomes’ emerge as the top QA objective for agile and DevOps adoption
This year’s survey found that high-level commercial goals increasingly determine the key objectives for testing and quality assurance within organizations. The respondents ranked “contribute to business growth and outcomes” and “end user satisfaction” (40% for both) as the two most crucial Testing and QA objectives for this year.
Security remains front-and-center, with new issues to address
The report revealed challenges and opportunities when it comes to security; on the upside, 58% reported they now undertake security testing in cloud environments, up from 42% in 2015. While a majority (53%) also reported that test automation has reduced the overall security risk to their organization. 44% of respondents have highlighted “enhance security” as the most important IT priority this year. Furthermore, among technical issues in current applications development, challenges with security validation is cited by more than half (52%) of the respondents.
Automation is making a difference, but brings challenges
Test automation (TA), a steadily growing trend over recent years, has delivered benefits including improved control and transparency of test activities (cited by 63%), better detection of defects (56%), and reduction of test costs (56%) and cycle time (54%).
However, this year’s survey indicates how test automation is increasingly a full-lifecycle need and that this development is leading to gaps: when asked about the technical challenges they face in developing applications, 63% noted a ‘lack of end-to-end automation from build to deployment’, up from 55% in last year’s survey.
Greater use of automation and artificial intelligence are also revealing a skills gap in some organizations. 41% identified a ‘lack of proper skills for QA & Testing’ as a technical challenge. While 58% of organizations surveyed have brought in external AI expertise, either because it’s not part of their core business, (23%), they needed AI knowledge fast (24%) or it was a requirement for a limited amount of time only (11%).
“The Testing and QA landscape is evolving rapidly as innovation drives down costs and improves processes,” said Mark Buenen, Global Leader, Digital Assurance and Quality Engineering for the Capgemini Group. “We are continuing to see Testing and QA move from a discrete area within an organization to one that is more fundamental to enterprise operations and business outcomes.
“At the same time, change brings its own challenges – two of the most important being orchestration of Testing and QA in agile and DevOps development and access to the required skillsets. To stay ahead, organizations need to embrace new approaches, including a connected and holistic approach to testing, raising organizational awareness of test environments, and adopting a ‘center of excellence’ approach to test data management.”
Raffi Margaliot, Micro Focus Senior Vice President and General Manager for Application Delivery Management, said: “Testing and automation are critical factors for reliable and secure software delivery, but teams still struggle with the associated costs and complexities. This year’s World Quality Report finds that skills, security, budgets, end-to-end testing and QA are all the more important to our customers as they undertake their digital transformation projects.”
Recommendations for the growth of testing in the evolving agile and DevOps environments:
The report concludes with a series of recommendations to support organizations in progressing wider agile and DevOps adoption:
-
Build a smart and connected testing eco-system deploying intelligent analytics
-
Raise the game on security. Introduce security testing early in the lifecycle — during design
-
Expand AI-related skillsets within the test team by onboarding data science, statistics, mathematics, and more
-
Re-imagine test automation as a platform
-
Raise awareness and visibility of test environments; adopt a center of excellence approach for test data management
